Oh yes, I feel it
I’m d-d-dizzy, I’m a tremblin’
heartquake
my richter scale reads: magnitude ten
devastation
catastrophe
Knees knockin’
teeth like castanets
polka dotted lovin’
Gingham wiggle skirt riding
up, up
up
you blink and it’s vanished
You’re shedding your skin
You’re shedding my skin
You’re baring my soul
I’m baring yours
We’re home alone, baby
the whole world’s gone fishin’
It’s just you and I in this room
Close your eyes and it’s a vast expanse of horizon
almost a wasteland of possibility
future
We can build this world from the ground up
Close my eyes and it’s just you
open them—
you

Your horizons, my dear,
are plainly far too vast for mine own eyes to ever
comprehend
Contemplating the beginnings and the ends of shooting stars and
where I might pivot to be thrown almost tragically amongst your orbit
Perhaps I can see
our galaxies intermingling at some point on that dazzling horizon
Blue flashes bursting frivolously
signalling crossed paths
Neural pathways do not matter here
here in the depths of our very own spacetime,
My dear,
my cosmic laden, star studded, dear,
this dimension could be ours
So,
extend to me your gravitational pull
and I would encircle the planet of your heart
without falter

I wish I met more people, but then again I feel overwhelmed when more than one person contacts me at once. I think maybe it is just I crave more width.
More stories, more challenges. More and more vocabulary. More to write about;
the good
the bad
the heinous and gluttonous
glory, contagion, sex, interrogation, integration
life—
Monotony and spontaneity

It’s all just endless goings on where you edge yourself toward the crumbling cliff top because someone beautiful said there was a crowd down there screaming your name. So you shuffle and shift and sweat beads and drips until you are so close that you can hardly stand to breathe. Worried the fluctuation of air perpetually in and out of your lungs might cause a tremor in the earth.
Your ankles are weak but that beautiful person has an ear to ear smile and is egging you on, promising you the love you think is love is “just a little further“….

Your hands are shaking hard like when you were six and your mother asked you to shake out all the lumps in the instant pancake mix- you know, the one that comes in a plastic bottle.
Just add water.
Just shake, come on now, it ain’t hard.Like this.
You think that perhaps the wind changed and now you’re stuck quaking and quivering like a lost child who wish they’d meet more people.
Different people who wouldn’t mind if you couldn’t shake out all the lumps or you couldn’t stop shaking.

Melbourne feels like a migraine. A heavy, concrete thudding in all four corners of every room that fills me.
But it also feels soft. The air is thick this time of year, when the mercury still rises above thirty most days. I can feel the weight changing as I move from indoors to outdoors and city to suburbs then regional.

You can’t see inside windows like you can in the countryside where I grew up. You can’t see into eyes either, everyone is hiding behind bricked up facades and six foot fences— lookin’ pretty, feelin’ ugly.

They say eyes are the windows to the soul but all I see are voids. The light is sucked out of everyone, no glimmers of hope ’cause it’s all nine to five in business casual or ladies on arms or men inside purses.

Vibrations are hasty, everyone moves too fast or too slow and I get impatient in crowds.
All the love is lost—
people are looking only for a hookup or a good fuck or someone they can brag to their friends about without ever having to commit. When committment is where the joys of challenge originate.
And I wonder if they feel anything at all when they lay pensively in beds that don’t belong to them.
Are they reflecting on their lover or are they contemplating whether or not they should even bother having breakfast tomorrow so they can save a few dollars. Dollars are hard to come by but warmth and emotion seems more far fetched.

But their eyes, it eats me up inside.

Lids are dabbed with colour and lashes are coated in black makeup. Others are bare. They show their broken blood vessels and creases, the build up blocking their ducts, they don’t cry enough. Perhaps they don’t at all. Perhaps they can’t.

Shutters and curtains and mouths are closed until their is a want to get their way. Instead of cute, handwritten signs saying “back in five” all I see are billboards screaming “closed for business”.
Boarded up doorways and gates that are rusted shut belong to the people I pass in the city. Hands shaking hands robotically, chins nodding in forced agreement that yes, we are all human so yes, we must interact. Allbeit hesitantly. Allbeit for financial gain or to climb that one rung higher on societies ladder of success.

People watching and I feel that metropolitan migraine cha- cha- cha-ing its way back into my skull. Think John Brack’s Collins St., 5 pm. The heavy footfalls of professional jerkoff’s striding homebound with their noses so far pointed toward the sky that they’re stepping on the threadbare toes of the poor without so much as a sniffle.

I used to think Melbourne was a spectacle of curiosities, how I have been decieved.

For those few with oil burning bright in their eyes it seems a mere stepping stone to greatness. Somewhere to manipulate until it appears meagre and grey, like the colours in a painting fading from sun exposure. The green is still green and the blue is still blue but the blacks are fading to greys and the reds to pinks and some colours have merged altogether— it’s a mess.
This is where those few fly, jet on outta there and make some vibrant place home.

If only I didn’t care so much
but the truth of the matter is,
the on my knees neck inching downward in the rain,
honest to God,
suck me out to sea with the furious tide and take me to the ocean floor
truth of the matter is

I do

And I care so wholeheartedly
to hear your voice at four twenty-six in the morning
if that’s the best time for you
Eyes heavy and it feels like closing time at the ice rink after skating for six hours straight

And, I do care to take myself away to you
throw my little life into suitcases and hat boxes and post the little things I can’t bear to leave behind
Give to you myself like a gift with bows and bells and ribbons a plenty
with international airmail stamps and bruised from travel
but oh-so specially delivered to you

Slide your favourite knife through the thick binds of packing tape and peel them from my skin
See my soft perimeters expand and pull with the motions, see my eyes blink slow and bovine lashes bat in the breeze of you
Unwrap me
Cut locks of my hair for trinket boxes and fun
Sever all the chords I ever had attached like a marionette puppet
replace them with your delicate spiderweb strings or strings of the harp of your heart

Toy with me
I permit you to use me all up
devour me for all that I am and take every last ounce that I have to give

Ask me
Ask me to move my whole life to a not-so-foreign country where I can listen and write and love you
Ask me to move my whole life to a foreign country where the voices sound strange and the language is unbeknowst to these ears and

Teach me
Watch the struggle of my tongue trying to round sentences I cannot grasp
and the struggle of my eyes as my ears scream to hear the words for what they mean

I have all the care and all the time in the world for you
You’ve got meaha!
Freshly minted, this tendered currency is only for you and there are millions of cents to every dollar
to fill your pockets full and spend days counting my worth
For you it is endless
I am a stream that wraps a solitary planet hanging in the balance of time a thousand times over and becomes an ocean you may swim in
I am a tree that grows for miles into the atmosphere and begs you to climb it
I am a small girl outstretched in the moonlight
the stars reflecting in my eyes and reflecting into yours

It’s the latter portion of summer where the days are still seemingly long and the heat that was so unusually distant for the past several months is now riding on coattails.The breeze still feels like being kissed all over and the sun burns your skin within ten minutes of exposure.The UV is high, the season is long, my mind and my heart are buried deep within the snow of the Rockies.

My blood needs the warmth of these concrete footpaths, my eyes could do without the glare of the sun. Everything surrounding me seems reflective; the buildings, the river, strangers with spectacles and shiny jewellery.I am constantly squinting.I am a cold soul looking for the flame of another to keep me a-simmering, warm enough to function. I am lamenting the thought of another lonely summer night.

I won’t let your pilot light go out. I promise.

Sitting on the grass and it’s damp beneath me. My thighs are beginning to itch and I know I should get up to leave.

But I don’t.

I stay firm in my seat, my patch on the lawn in the city pregnant with concrete and glass.I am in the background of tourists photographs. Happy, smiling families with their children squealing with laughter. Hearty, innocent, sincere laughter coming straight from the gut and I wonder how many pictures I am in the background of.Who has seen my candid face?I wonder if anyone has even noticed me at all or am I the only person to scan the background more vigorously than the foreground? I wonder if anyone has seen me and thought to themselves my-oh-my— what a beautiful woman. And I laugh to myself, I know the answer to my pondered, solitary thought.

Late summer in Australia feels like mid-summer full force.

Today it will be thirty-three, yesterday it was thirty and tomorrow is forecast to be thirty-two. I am melting like the wicked witch of the East, my blood is boiling, curdling, I’m turing sour.See: spilled milkSee: untouched cerealRancid—Potent—UnfriendlyNext week we are promised rain and a dip in the mercury. Nineteen degrees, maybe fourteen, if I’m lucky.

Best take thorough stock of my winter wardrobe. I always looked better in a coat.

I’m imagining a life of perfection that isn’t always perfect. I’m picturing you sleeping beside me in the dark, babbling nightmares aloud and tossing until I manage to rouse you and flick the side table lamp on. Through tear stains you’d smile up at my worry. Naked in every sense of the word you’d hold me so close we could slip and accidentally merge into one.

Closing my eyes, I’m imagining our lounge room. Shelves lining every wall and overflowing with books and roses beyond count. They smell like knowledge. Musty pages filled with beautiful language, so many alphabets and numeric symbols. All to sup from at our will. To read to one another in the bathtub of an evening and laze about lax in silks intertwined, with books and hands held firm in our fingers, candles burning all around. Vocabulary softly suspended in the air.

What quintessential haze rests beyond these eyelids.

And our strolling through the streets and forests together, laughing and singing and tormenting each other with affection. Spontaneous tattoos and cutting our hair. Colour all over our skin and nail beds perpetually stained.

I’d grow my fingernails so I could give up false tips and file them into claws. Paint them death dark black. Black claws to comb the hair from your eyes when it falls and scratch your back when you complain of an itch or if you can’t sleep and I’d ask you to sing to me. Sing to me with rolled r’s and depth beyond depth.

“Teach me how to play the piano”,

I’d ask for your help all the time,

“Teach me how to speak German, or Italian or Romanian. Or help me to speak Japanese again”
“Teach me how to sew properly”

I’m imagining a picnic blanket laden in paper, pens, Dr. Pepper and food and our bodies lain opposite one another. Writing utensil in hand I’d be scrawling sentences ferociously, too quickly would the words pour for my hand to keep up. Letters would lace and fog and the dyslexia wouldn’t help. Stories that may never be reread, stories that are lost in inscription. Stories that I am sure would be written of you laying directly in front of me and how flawless this moment is.

“Teach me how to cook your favourite meal”

I would ask something new every day.

“Teach me how to do card tricks”
“Teach me how to discern pitch and chords”

I have guzzled your honest words, imbibed on a primitive level and become greedy for your works. Ravenous for the next chapter, itching for a phrase to sate my parched soul. Terrified to read the next post for when I have read it back to front and front to back and touched every letter carefully I know it is over and I will hunger once more.

You said we became a handful of salt.You have said many a thing.Mentioned in passing, probably with no assumption it might stick in my mind, and a sincere grin spread between your ears that those angles I cannot see of mine, those are some you might want to linger upon. That’s what love is, you said.Those hideous angles, the shadows cast and mouths lulling with lips parted during intermissions, between syllables and hands covering teeth where laughter seemingly explodes.

July;

you may find yourself but fallen, down some daunting chasm and discover there is a hand to hold in those depths you thought you might plummet through in endless solitude.

Or you may not.

For now we remain salt in one another’s palms. Ready and waiting, fingers curled in anticipation to be tossed over superstitious left shoulders. Grains of humanity bound within tiny sodium flakes. Flavours savoury sure to shift into sweet sensations. Metamorphosis of treacle kisses, strings of golden saliva trailing between the keen lips of lovers. Lovers who secretly tiptoe to meet between the solidity of the earth and the boundless grace of the heavens.

You and I, my love, we have romantic mindsPlans a plenty and sleepless nights ahead, for we know too well that the time we have promised is time borrowed and finite—until, most certainly, we will meet once again.

I am frightening myself in broad daylight
this is not a lucid dream
which I have come to control so effortlessly and
paddle through with the tick tick ticking of time to spare
It is not the nighttime intervening
nor is it blurred lines
lines in the sand drawn in fits of laughter only
to be obscured by the suck of the oceans hideous bowel
turning our sniggers into howling cries

I am too aware of that
My dreams, ideals and notions are changing
they are morphing and tumbling
Their colours are intermingling and
now they seem but a muddy mess of
browns and beiges turning black andbang!
suddenly red like a shotgun slug
passing through my gut at the speed of lightsmack!
suddenly red like the supple skin of my thigh
adjusting shades after your snappy hand willed it to be so